


there's no one home but you

by smalltalk



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: AU, Isolation, M/M, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, kind of, quiet spring mornings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-11 12:52:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5627293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smalltalk/pseuds/smalltalk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Good mornin’, you punk.” Bucky smiles.<br/>“You,” says Steve. “You’re dead.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	there's no one home but you

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Никого не будет в доме](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8308306) by [Red_Sally](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Red_Sally/pseuds/Red_Sally)



Steve wakes up to the shrill call of an alarm, one Sam had once put on his phone for their morning runs and he'd never bothered to get rid of. He slaps at the cold piece of metal until the noise disappears, the room falling quiet again to a familiar tune outside the window of the respectable little brownstone.

The sound of spring.

Steady humming in the streets below and songbirds above. Early morning conversations and bicycles zipping off to some destination. Gentle sunlight filters through the open curtains in abstract patterns in the floor.

He remembers, idly, that he doesn't have any plans for the day (there's nothing _left_ to burn down, no one left to _look_ for). And, well, it’s kind of a nice change of pace, isn't it? Just staying in bed, because you can, because the world doesn't need you there anymore, because the world is content with forgetting that you ever were.

A light breeze wafts gently into the room. Steve smiles into the the sheets.

He never opens the windows- it's sometimes difficult to look outside at a Brooklyn that was once your only home, is still your only home, that's now just another place you can't fall asleep in at night. Mornings are usually never pleasant, when you're opening your eyes to a bed that's always a little half empty. But if he pretends for a while, it’s like it’d only been a day since he'd been falling asleep in a rickety twin bed with legs like a furnace tangled between his to keep the morning cold out.

The breeze picks up suddenly, making him burrow into the sheets and bring his knees to his chest, because there's no warm body to curl into instead.

 

The sunlight disappears for a moment. It's funny- Steve never opens the windows.

 

He throws the covers off of himself and, jumping out of the bed, approaches the window across the room with slow caution. There are trees everywhere in the neighborhood that skim the rooftops, anywhere a sniper could rest, and the window had been wide open. He never opens the windows. The only people who knows he chooses to stay here are Sam and Nat, and they never come without some kind of early notice, not without knocking on the door first, not even-

“Hey, you.” A voice from behind him pulls him out of his racing thoughts. Light and sweet like cotton candy. Steve feels sick to his stomach at the thought.

No one else lives in his apartment.

Steve turns around, heart pounding through his ribcage. Beating through his lungs, as if after all of these years, they still refuse to work.

His knees go weak, and for the first time in months, his hands itch for a pencil. Words never did a guy like that any justice; a real work of art, that mad had always been. Stumbling expertly around dance moves, drunk in suspenders and wrinkled buttoned ups, with the devil in the curve of his crooked smile and his curse in his fingertips. There were things Steve could never replicate with a stick of charcoal, even from the clearest of his memories- and he remembered them all.

And now, he's standing by Steve’s bed in a tank top, hands stuffed into the pockets of ratty jeans.

Steve parts his mouth slightly, searching for the right thing to say, like the wrong line will send him running away again- isn't that how these things go? He lets out a breath like he's walking a tightrope, but all of the words he wants to say shatter and fall to the wood floor, the miles of time and space between them.

“Good mornin’, you punk.” Bucky smiles, the barest hint of an upturn on his lips.

“You,” says Steve instead. “You’re dead.”

Bucky grins softly, then, eyes wrinkling at the edges like Steve’s just told him a punchline to the funniest joke. In an instant, he corners Steve against the windowpane, calloused fingers running down his arms, featherlight. He smells like home, from a time when meals came rarely and were always meant to be shared, when happiness was quiet Saturday mornings like this one.

And just like that. Steve knows he's gone crazy.

“You're dead.” He repeats, lowering his eyes at the metal fingertips lifting his chin, then trailing down the gentle slope of his neck, and the steady thrum of metal as it cages him against the wall. All of his defenses shut down, and he forgets that he's a foot taller, a hundred pounds heavier, strong enough to fight.

“This how you welcome your fella back home?” Bucky asks against Steve’s cheek. His breath is so warm. Steve aches to reach out to him. Like a flower to the light.

“You're dead.”  Steve repeats again, more firmly. “They- they killed you in an air strike two years ago. There were no survivors. There was a body. We had to bury your remains there, and I held them, and I _know._ You're _dead_.”

“ _Dead_? C’mon, really, now. What’re you on?” Bucky laughs, deep and throaty. His eyes look straight through Steve’s soul, see every lie he's ever told in the last two years with a sigh.

“Nothing. You ain’t real.” Steve shakes his head. “Can’t be real. Not even magic could bring you back, Buck, and we _tried._ I guess that's what we get for trying, though, and now your ghost won't even let me be-”

“Oh, hush- I'm _right_ here. Feel it and see how real I am, Steve.” Bucky gestures to himself, a dangerous twinkle in his eyes. “I know we got all the time in the world, but I ain’t ever been patient. Where's that kiss you promised me, too, huh?”

And, _God,_ if it could be just that easy to believe him. To let that up and have everything in return. Steve'd give anything to have him back, if he had anything left to give. He settles for a pathetic whimper. 

“Go on.” Bucky lifts Steve’s hand to hold it in his flesh one. “ _See_? Real, flesh and blood.” His fingers wrap around Steve’s. The spaces between Steve’s fingers are right where they’d always fit perfectly, warm and true and right.

“ _Buck_.” He whimpers, crumbling into a solid chest and a warm embrace, knees buckling beneath him, his own body still betraying him. A soldier that the people could put right next to God, with the blood of such a being running through his veins, and he’d still cling to this man like a _lifeline_ , as if it were impossible to breath otherwise.

“ _Hey_ , now, darlin’-” Bucky hushes him, lifting a hand to brush away Steve’s overgrown hair from his face, the tears from his cheeks. “I’m here. I’m home. What took you so long to wake up, huh? I’ve been waiting so damn long.”

“I’m sorry, Bucky, I’m _sorry_ -” Steve apologizes over and over, for something, for everything he could've done but didn't.

Bucky chuckles quietly, pulling Steve’s face into the crook of his neck, and presses a kiss to the crown of his head, like the minute height difference hasn’t changed a thing about them. Bucky touches him, and the walls he’d so carefully built to guard his heart crumble to dust.

Steve inhales and exhales quietly to the sound of a heartbeat ( _his or Bucky’s, he’s not sure_ ). The first breath in decades, one he'd been holding in his lungs since the forties.

A warm body, a hand to hold, something to come home to.

Once, Steve wanted all of those things. There was a life he wanted to live, back then.

“You’re alright, Stevie.” Bucky says softly, a little bit sadly, like he can hear him thinking out loud. “You’re awake now.”

He lifts his head to look Bucky in the eye. They're slate grey, like the ocean, a cracked pavement after a storm.

_I’m awake._

 

 

Steve wakes up to the sound of an alarm clock, shivering.

The window is wide open, curtains billowing like ghosts in the wind.

 

**Author's Note:**

> [ you're all that's left me, too](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTsaixdX4f8)


End file.
